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Wireless Measurement of Heart Beat and Blood Flow
Background: Measurement of heart beat and blood flow in the human body is important for personal health care and treatment. Direct physical contact is typically needed for monitoring the heartbeat of patients. As technology advances rapidly in recent years, with everything went or is slated to go wireless, it would be convenient and beneficial for medical professionals to be able to measure patients’ heart beat wirelessly without any physical contact. The ability of wireless measurement of blood flow in the human body is also attractive to medical professionals. These abilities will help streamline the health care of patients, which will ultimately lead to tremendous benefits for medical practices.
Objective/Purpose: To develop techniques utilizing wireless microwave interferometry for non-contact measurement of human’s heart beat and blood flow.
Methods: Our method is based on microwave interferometry and can produce very fine resolution and fast response. Microwave interferometry is a process detecting the change of phase and capable of resolving any physical quantity being measured within a fraction of the operating wavelength. It has relatively faster system response than other techniques due to the fact that it is typically operated with a single-frequency source rather than across a frequency range.
Results: We developed a technique for measuring human’s heartbeat and blood flow using microwave interferometry. In measurement of heart beat and blood flow, a microwave signal is used as the irradiating source and the change of the phase of the return signal over time is detected in the signal processing. This phase change is processed to extract the Doppler frequency shift used for calculating the speed of the heart beat and blood flow.
Discussion/Conclusions: Accurate wireless non-contact measurement of human’s heart beat and blood flow with microwave interferometry will advance the practice of medicine and promise substantial benefits to patients and medical professionals.
Learning Areas:
Communication and informaticsConduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Other professions or practice related to public health
Public health or related research
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Design microwave interferometry systems for measurement of human’s heart beat and blood flow.
Identify microwave interferometry technology for measurement of human’s heart beat and blood flow.
Assess microwave interferometry technology for medical applications.
Formulate ideas of using microwave wireless technology for healthcare.
Design medical devices based on microwave wireless technology for healthcare.
Keyword(s): Health Assessment, Telehealth
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been conducting research on using radio-frequency (RF) wireless technologies for biological, medicine, and healthcare applications for more than 5 years during my undergraduate and medical studies. I have published and presented various papers in these areas.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.